It is, honestly, the usual strange/not-strange message from Pope Francis. Strange in that he goes all over the place except to the specific place where the problem resides, and not-strange in that, well, this is what he usually does, and there’s always a reason for that.

Your experience of reading the letter might be like mine (or it might not – who knows!) – I read it and nodded and thought, Well, not bad, that’s true, sure, it’s good for these things to be said, nice point there and then I finished, thought about it for a minute, and realized that none of the specific problematic issues had actually been addressed and further, the spiritual context which Pope Francis recommends for going forward, it could be argued, actually enables the original problematic actions. Many problematic actions.

To begin with:

“At times of great confusion and uncertainty, we need to be attentive and discerning, to free our hearts of compromises and false certainties, in order to hear what the Lord asks of us in the mission he has given us. Many actions can be helpful, good and necessary, and may even seem correct, but not all of them have the “flavour” of the Gospel. To put it colloquially, we have to be careful that “the cure does not become worse than the disease”. And this requires of us wisdom, prayer, much listening and fraternal communion.”

Quite true, of course.

The first consequence that Pope Francis raises, the first issue that seems to require addressing is that of credibility:

“The Church’s credibility has been seriously undercut and diminished by these sins and crimes, but even more by the efforts made to deny or conceal them. This has led to a growing sense of uncertainty, distrust and vulnerability among the faithful. As we know, the mentality that would cover things up, far from helping to resolve conflicts, enabled them to fester and cause even greater harm to the network of relationships that today we are called to heal and restore.

We know that the sins and crimes that were committed, and their repercussions on the ecclesial, social and cultural levels, have deeply affected the faithful. They have caused great perplexity, upset and confusion…”

This is institutional thinking, isn’t it? It is, in fact, one of the core attitudes that led to the level of this scandal over the past decades (and probably always): This makes us look bad.

One could say that this is really nothing more than the traditional Catholic understanding of scandal – a true and valid way of entering into this situation and its consequences. But it’s actually a little different. For traditionally, scandal is seen as a negative because it works to obfuscate the power and truth of the Gospel – people can’t see Jesus because you, the one supposedly representing it, have gotten completely in the way. There’s a hint of this here, but the entire passage is really more about the problem of people seeing the institution in a negative light being a problem simply because it’s better that they see it in a positive light.

“The loss of credibility also raises painful questions about the way we relate to one another. Clearly, a living fabric has come undone, and we, like weavers, are called to repair it. This involves our ability, or inability, as a community to forge bonds and create spaces that are healthy, mature and respectful of the integrity and privacy of each person. It involves our ability to bring people together and to get them enthused and confident about a broad, shared project that is at once unassuming, solid, sober and transparent.”

And so on. The rest of the letter expresses Francis’ usual themes – listen, dialogue, make space for the new, prioritize unity, don’t impose abstractions:

“This approach demands of us the decision to abandon a modus operandi of disparaging, discrediting, playing the victim or the scold in our relationships, and instead to make room for the gentle breeze that the Gospel alone can offer. Let us not forget that “the collegial lack of a heartfelt and prayerful acknowledgment of our limitations prevents grace from working more effectively within us, for no room is left for bringing about the potential good that is part of a sincere and genuine journey of growth”. [6] Let us try to break the vicious circle of recrimination, undercutting and discrediting, by avoiding gossip and slander in the pursuit of a path of prayerful and contrite acceptance of our limitations and sins, and the promotion of dialogue, discussion and discernment. This will dispose us to finding evangelical paths that can awaken and encourage the reconciliation and credibility that our people and our mission require of us.”

And so I wonder:

Is this situation a problem because it diminished the institution’s credibility and threatens bonds of communion or…because people committed all sorts of sins of commission and omission, used other human beings, did great harm to God’s children and offended and disobeyed the Lord who created us for good, not evil?

The framework and assumption that what’s most at stake here is institutional credibility is exactly what led to cover-ups and protection of clerical perpetrators. Exactly. That, of course, is nothing the Holy Father would defend and is what his letter is presented in opposition to, but until you shake that framework that privileges the horizontal over the vertical, you’re stuck in the same rut. It’s subtle, but is at the core of so many problems in the contemporary Church, including this one:

Understanding human actions and choices as fundamentally, basically a response to God’s call and yes, law, keeps everything else in context, since, of course, God’s fundamental call is to love.

Understanding human actions as fundamentally, basically oriented towards keeping some sort of peace with others or creating a certain environment without our obligation to God at the center – absolute, unmoving center, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us – makes it really easy for us to create our own reality, including our own definitions for sin and forgiveness.

It’s the difference between living inside the Garden – or outside. That’s really the whole point of Genesis 1-3.

In short, it just seems to me that a week of reflection on this needs to not start with metaphors of jars and pebbles or concerns about credibility, but rather something more along the lines of Psalm 32.

Which it probably did, outside the official public communications.

Anyway, I haven’t even remarked on what struck me as the most problematic aspect of this letter: the deep, repeated call to work together, be unified, be in communion and so on.

Wait, what? Why is that a problem? I mean…isn’t dialogue and communion the point?

No. Truth is.

And the reason the harping on unity and scolding about “recrimination” is problematic in this context is that one of the crucial issues leading to this crisis was precisely that: prioritizing of the external bonds between clerics above telling the truth and the privileging of protecting image over allowing consequences to be borne.

Who’s against dialogue and a mature search for answers and new ways forward? Hey, not me! But nothing at all will change if that dialogue is conducted in a context in which we are focused on how we think we should make each other feel and how the world sees us rather than on how all of this looks to God, – or if we’re more invested in saying things that make us seem open-minded and unified rather than saying true things, no matter how harsh they may be.

Is the culture of church leadership in desperate need of encouragement to be more gently tolerant of all points of view and less critical of each other? Seems to me it’s pretty much the opposite.

We don’t create the bonds of Christian unity. God does this. Jesus Christ does, through Baptism. Our call is to recognize those bonds, strengthen them and then do the harder thing: be willing to recognize when those bonds have been broken by sin – and courageously say it out loud, no matter what the price.

Shorter, cynical version: When you’re told to get along and play nice, you’re probably being played.

… it will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive.

Keep this in your mind as you read commentary – of any kind, really.

Of course, one can replace “progressive” with any ideology that fits the particular moment, but I do think that “insufficiently progressive” has a broad truth to it. In the contemporary world, too, with our crazy pace of news and commentary, I think we can simply add “motivated by the fear of not virtue-signaling with my Hot Take.”

Amid various struggles for workers rights and relief efforts, Péguy became a socialist of sorts because he believed that true socialism sought real brotherhood and respect among men. He was young, and the world had not yet seen any socialist regimes. But he intuited the true spirit behind socialist movements when he came into contact with actual socialist practice. Péguy was by nature incapable of the kinds of lies and partisanship that make up most party politics. His verdict about such things is a phrase known to many people who have otherwise never heard of Péguy: Everything begins in mysticism (le mystique) and ends in politics. This formula summed up more than twenty years of political experience.

Péguy the socialist also became a supporter of Dreyfus, the French Jewish officer wrongly accused of spying for Germany. He started a journal, the Cahiers de la Quinzaine, to defend these and other just causes because he discovered at an international convention that the socialists practiced the same kind of partisan lying and injustice that he had associated with bourgeois conservatives. Journals like his were forbidden to criticize positions taken by the movement. The socialist mystique was betrayed by socialist politics.

For Péguy, the root of any mystique was remaining fidèle (faithful) to truth and justice despite party commitments. He would refuse to impose an orthodoxy even on writers for the Cahiers: A review only continues to have life if each issue annoys at least one-fifth of its readers. Justice lies in seeing that it is not always the same fifth. Without support from either right or left in a sharply ideological France, his fidelity led to a passion in a more Christ-like sense, persecution and gradual economic strangulation by established powers.

Another truth about human behavior that might help some of this click for you is this:

More people than you suspect are motivated to make more of their choices than you could imagine not so much by what they are for, but by what and whom they are against.

Basically:

I am not sure what I believe, but Those People believe the Wrong Thing, so I must be against everything they say and do.

In this post-Vatican II world of Church partisanship, this drives a great deal. It’s just another way of expressing the reflexive reliance on ad hominem that we see in reactions to events.

It’s pretty basic:

Asking: What did members of the hierarchy, including Pope Francis, know about the misdeeds of clerics and how were these misdeeds dealt with?

The nephew of his two immediate predecessors, Benedict IX was a man of very different character to either of them. He was a disgrace to the Chair of Peter. Regarding it as a sort of heirloom, his father Alberic placed him upon it when a mere youth, not, however, apparently of only twelve years of age (according to Raoul Glaber, Hist., IV, 5, n. 17. Cf. V, 5, n. 26), but of about twenty (October, 1032).

Of his pontifical acts little is known, except that he held two or three synods in Rome and granted a number of privileges to various churches and monasteries. He insisted that Bretislav, Duke of Bohemia, should found a monastery, for having carried off the body of St. Adalbert from Poland. In 1037 he went north to meet the Emperor Conrad and excommunicated Heribert, Archbishop of Milan, who was at emnity with him (Ann. Hildesheimenses, 1038).

Taking advantage of the dissolute life he was leading, one of the factions in the city drove him from it (1044) amid the greatest disorder, and elected an antipope (Sylvester III) in the person of John, Bishop of Sabina (1045 -Ann. Romani, init. Victor, Dialogi, III, init.).

Benedict, however, succeeded in expelling Sylvester the same year; but, as some say, that he might marry, he resigned his office into the hands of the Archpriest John Gratian for a large sum. John was then elected pope and became Gregory VI (May, 1045). Repenting of his bargain, Benedict endeavoured to depose Gregory. This resulted in the intervention of King Henry III. Benedict, Sylvester, and Gregory were deposed at the Council of Sutri (1046) and a German bishop (Suidger) became Pope Clement II.

After his speedy demise, Benedict again seized Rome (November, 1047), but was driven from it to make way for a second German pope, Damasus II (November, 1048).

Of the end of Benedict it is impossible to speak with certainty. Some authors suppose him to have been still alive when St. Leo IX died, and never to have ceased endeavouring to seize the papacy. But it is more probable that the truth lies with the tradition of the Abbey of Grottaferrata, first set down by Abbot Luke, who died about 1085, and corroborated by sepulchral and other monuments within its walls. Writing of Bartholomew, its fourth abbot (1065), Luke tells of the youthful pontiff turning from his sin and coming to Bartholomew for a remedy for his disorders. On the saint’s advice, Benedict definitely resigned the pontificate and died in penitence at Grottaferrata. [See “St. Benedict and Grottaferrata” (Rome, 1895), a work founded on the more important “De Sepulcro Benedicti IX”, by Dom Greg. Piacentini (Rome, 1747).]

….The German Pope Damasus II died in 1048, and the Romans sent to ask Henry III, Conrad’s successor, to let them have as the new pope either Halinard, Archbishop of Lyons, or Bruno. Both of them were favourably known to the Romans by what they had seen of them when they came to Rome on pilgrimage. Henry at once fixed upon Bruno, who did all he could to avoid the honour which his sovereign wished to impose upon him. When at length he was overcome by the combined importunities of the emperor, the Germans, and the Romans, he agreed to go to Rome, and to accept the papacy if freely elected thereto by the Roman people. He wished, at least, to rescue the See of Peter from its servitude to the German emperors.

When, in company with Hildebrand he reached Rome, and presented himself to its people clad in pilgrim’s guise and barefooted, but still tall, and fair to look upon, they cried out with one voice that him and no other would they have as pope. Assuming the name of Leo, he was solemnly enthroned 12 February, 1049. Before Leo could do anything in the matter of the reform of the Church on which his heart was set, he had first to put down another attempt on the part of the ex-Pope Benedict IX to seize the papal throne. He had then to attend to money matters, as the papal finances were in a deplorable condition. To better them he put them in the hands of Hildebrand, a man capable of improving anything.

(From the old Catholic Encyclopedia articles on Benedict IX and Leo IX.)

No, no, no.

This is not one of those posts where I give you historical dirt and then offer cheery, heartfelt encouragement…

Nor is this a virtue-signaling #sobrave #notgoinganywhere post.

Because….there’s no shortage of those, either.

It’s just this:

There have always – always, people – been terrible problems in the Church. It’s unfortunate that general historical illiteracy, combined with contemporary experiences of faith that are mostly determined by which party you happen to fall into, work to hide this plain fact from most people.

It is, of course, very strange to be living right in the middle of one of those periods – but I do believe my point is (and this might depress some of you) that we are always in one of “those” periods. Faithlessness, hypocrisy, striving, corruption of all kinds, at all levels: has it ever been absent? Of course not. An even on a massive scale: Remember Arianism (and its progeny semi-Arianism)? Which split the Church for decades? How many bishops and other clergy remained faithful during the Reformation? So much church history that is aimed at popular audiences, particularly from a “conservative” angle, traces a triumphalist, straight-line path from Pentecost to the present, when reality has been far, far messier.

And a big part of the mess – one of the greatest sins – is that the ordinary person, seeking comfort, yearning for life and spiritual nourishment, is exploited, ignored or dismissed by those who hold power and have forgotten Who gave it to them and why. Of course our faith is shaken, perhaps even destroyed when we experience that, or even when we become aware of it. Read the Gospel readings from this week. Right there from the beginning.

I have written so much about this in the past. I’ve no need to rewrite any of that, since my views haven’t changed, nor has my interpretation of events. What’s come out the past few months has been of a piece with the revelations of sixteen years ago…and then the revelations a few years before that. Read Jason Berry, for heaven’s sake.

Charming, faithless bastards exploit those entrusted to their care, flatter their starry-eyed enablers, and then cover-up for each other.

Over and over again.

(And not just in Church – it is the well-worn pattern of abuse and exploitation in every area of life. Watch out, wherever you are. Teach your kids to stay far from adults who seek their friendship. It’s just not…normal.)

The specifics vary in different periods of history and different cultures. But what is consistent, it seems, is the overarching instinct to throw your lot in with the prevailing culture and its values – power, success, money, sex, a particular social system – and be formed by that instead of the Gospel, instead of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

But now we have a new level, in which a figure in the hierarchy – the former Apostolic Nuncio – has released a lengthy statement, naming names.

And Pope Francis, one of those named, has said that he won’t be talking about it.

Again, I’m not in this space right now to add to the already voluminous, constant commentary. Much of it is very good. I’ve said things about Pope Francis’ style and priorities here and there: in this post, which still gets a lot of traffic, and a follow-up.

I think the only thing I want to say right now is this:

Ideology and partisanship has done great damage to the Church worldwide, and particularly to the Church in the United States. In this particular moment and moments like this, it becomes a real obstacle to uncovering and honestly discussing the truth.

Instead of simply addressing assertions and researching their veracity, we must, it seems, always – always slog through a ritual of addressing ad hominem. And as the years have gone on, it just seems to get worse and worse. I have a theory as to why: laziness and enslavement to the short response window afforded by the Internet.

For if you are determined to get your Hot Take out there, if your presence on people’s timelines is an essential part of your persona and even livelihood – who the hell has time to research claims and compose point-by-point refutations or discuss specifics?

(Obviously this is not just a problem in discussions about religion. It really defines contemporary public “discourse,” period.)

It’s much easier to crow Oh, the Francis-haters are at it again! toss up a meme, and move on.

Owned.

That, and a fear of being associated with the “wrong” side, are major, crucial barriers to sane, fruitful examination of these issues and, most importantly, solving the problems, to the extent that they can be.

(I have driven myself nuts for the last fifteen minutes looking for a quote from – I’m convinced – either Mauriac or Bernanos on this score – I used it once in column ages ago – but I can’t find it. But if I could, trust me – it would be perfect. So.)

In a sense, there is nothing new about this either. Each “side” in American Catholicism has had its particular rows to hoe in this field, going back decades. The very conservative Wanderer was reporting on sexual abuse long before the early 2000’s explosion, but mostly of “liberal” prelates. The liberal National Catholic Reporter did this same – but from the opposite perspective. If you wanted to have even a glimmer of sense of what was going on, you had to swallow your pride and your prejudices and read both.

So it is today – read from all perspectives, but ignore those who frame everything they have to say in ad hominems and never actually address specific points at hand. Don’t bother. Hot takes and owning? Waste of time. Can we try – try – to do better?

It’s very gratifying. Not that folks weren’t doing this before, but I don’t think there’s any question that our book has a role in popularizing the practice – and all credit on that score goes to Ann Engelhart, who had the idea in the first place.

The communications office has been given the primary task of making sure what the pope says and does is made known to the world as quickly as possible. However, whenever the pope speaks off the cuff – or says something controversial – the Secretariat of State tells everyone in the Vatican to wait, until the “official version” comes out, no matter that the “unofficial,” but authentic, version is all over television and the newswires.

On 15 August 1975, the feast of the Assumption, he was arrested. He was dressed only in his cassock, and had a rosary in his pocket. By October, he was writing messages in jail, on a sheet of paper that a seven-year-old child, Quang, smuggled in. Those pages eventually became books, with hope as their central theme.

He spent 13 years in prison without trial. From Saigon, he was moved shackled to Nha Trang, then to the Vinh-Quang re-education camp in the mountains. Those were hard times.

He was held in solitary confinement for nine years, watched by two guards only for him. Since he could not have a Bible, he scrounged for whatever paper he could find to transcribe about 300 Gospel passages he knew by heart.

He celebrated Mass using the palm of his hand as chalice with three drops of wine and one of water. He got the wine from his family, saying it was to treat his stomach ache. His relatives realised what he meant and sent him a bottle of wine with the label “medicine against stomach ache”. He kept consecrated bread crumbs in cigarette packs.

He was still in isolation in Hanoi when he got a fish to cook, wrapped up in two pages of “L’Osservatore Romano”, which police confiscated when it arrived by mail. He cleaned out the two page and dried them in the sun, as a sign of union with Rome and the pope.

The authorities were concerned about his goodness and his attitude of love towards his persecutors, fearing that the guards might be won over. For this reason, they were changed every two weeks.

A first essential setting for learning hope is prayer. When no one listens to me any more, God still listens to me. When I can no longer talk to anyone or call upon anyone, I can always talk to God. When there is no longer anyone to help me deal with a need or expectation that goes beyond the human capacity for hope, he can help me. When I have been plunged into complete solitude …; if I pray I am never totally alone. The late Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, a prisoner for thirteen years, nine of them spent in solitary confinement, has left us a precious little book: Prayers of Hope. During thirteen years in jail, in a situation of seemingly utter hopelessness, the fact that he could listen and speak to God became for him an increasing power of hope, which enabled him, after his release, to become for people all over the world a witness to hope—to that great hope which does not wane even in the nights of solitude.

the miracle, attributed to the intercession of the Venerable Servant of God Clara Fey, founder of the Institute of the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus; born 11 April 1815 and died 8 May 1894

There does not seem to be a lot in English about Clara Fey, except in Wikipedia, which I am normally loathe to link to, but there just isn’t much out there.

In her childhood she observed the poor conditions in her town and was resolved to aid the poor in their suffering more so because of the importance her mother placed on helping those less fortunate than herself.To that end she would later set up a school with some likeminded friends in Aachen in 1837 in order to cater to the educational needs of poor children.

On 2 February 1844 in Aachen she established the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus as a means of leading children to Jesus Christ and to educate them in a religious environment. It was around 1835 that she started to read the works of Saint Teresa of Ávila and even desired to become a Carmelite nun. But in 1841 her spiritual aide Father Wilhelm Sartorius motivated her to instead read the works of Saint Francis de Sales for greater theological inspiration. She and some others made their vows as nuns in 1850. Her order received diocesan approval on 28 January 1848 from the Archbishop of Cologne and the papal decree of praise from Pope Pius IX on 11 July 1862 prior to Pope Leo XIII issuing full papal approval for her order on 15 June 1888

Here’s the website of her order – which was driven from Germany during the Kulturkampf, but returned eventually.

As the African island went from being a colonial outpost to an independent nation, Botovasoa was blacklisted as an enemy of the cause for independence and was killed in 1947 out of hatred of the faith.

Years later a village elder admitted on his deathbed to a local missionary that he ordered the murder of Botovasoa even though Botovasoa had told him he would be by his side to help him whenever he was in need. The elder told the missionary he felt Botovasoa’s presence and asked to be baptized.

the heroic virtues of the Servant of God Elia dalla Costa, Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, Archbishop of Florence; born 14 May 1872 and died 22 December 1961

The Nazis began to deport Jews after the German occupation of Italy in September 1943. A major rescue effort in Florence was begun by the city’s Jewish leader Rabbi Nathan Cassuto and Jewish resistance fighter Raffaele Cantoni. The operation soon became a joint Jewish-Christian effort, with the cardinal offering guidance.

Cardinal Dalla Costa recruited rescuers among the clergy and supplied letters asking monasteries and convents to shelter Jews. He sheltered Jewish refugees in his own palace for short periods before they could be taken to safety.

Yad Vashem said the cardinal was part of a network that helped save hundreds of local Jews and Jewish refugees from areas previously under Italian control.

Pope Francis announced May 4 that Detroit’s beloved Capuchin friar has met the requirements for beatification and will be named “blessed” — the second U.S.-born man to achieve such a designation and the first person from Michigan.

Although Fr. Solanus was born in Oak Grove, Wis., in 1870, he spent most of his adult life and ministry in Detroit, caring for the sick, poor and downtrodden and lending a listening ear and caring heart to the thousands who came to him for counsel, wisdom and aid.

Among the hundreds — if not thousands — of healings attributed to Fr. Solanus during and after his lifetime, Pope Francis recognized the authenticity of a miracle necessary for the friar to be elevated from “venerable” to “blessed” after a thorough review by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints, including panels of doctors and theologians, was completed earlier this year.

The declaration is here – and as usual, the list of approved causes moving forward provides an interesting glance at the breadth and depth and diversity of Catholicism.

Solanus Casey is very important to us here. My late husband Michael was devoted to him, and, for example, wrote this about Fr. Solanus as “The Priest who saved my life.” Of course, he died just a few weeks after writing that…but there was that other time….

When we lived in Fort Wayne in northern Indiana, we would often find our way to the Solanus Casey Center in Detroit – either because we were going to Detroit for some reason or we were on our way to Canada. Solanus Casey has been important to our family, and I find him such an interesting person – and an important doorway for understanding holiness.

For that is what Solanus Casey was – a porter, or doorkeeper, the same role held by St. Andre Bessette up in Montreal. They were the first people those in need would encounter as they approached the shrine or chapel.

And it was not as if Solanus Casey set out with the goal of being porter, either. His path to the Franciscans and then to the priesthood was long and painful and in some ways disappointing. He struggled academically and he struggled to fit in and be accepted, as one of Irish descent in a German-dominated church culture. He was finally ordained, but as a simplex priest – he could say Mass, but he could not preach or hear confessions – the idea being that his academic weaknesses indicated he did not have the theological understanding deemed necessary for those roles.

But God used him anyway. He couldn’t preach from a pulpit, but his faithful presence at the door preached of the presence of God. He couldn’t hear confessions, but as porter, he heard plenty poured from suffering hearts, and through his prayers during his life and after his death, was a conduit for the healing grace of God.

This is why the stories of the saints are such a helpful and even necessary antidote to the way we tend to think and talk about vocation these days, yes, even in the context of church. We give lip service to being called and serving, but how much of our language still reflects an assumption that it’s all, in the end, about our desires and our plans? We are convinced that our time on earth is best spent discovering our gifts and talents, nurturing our gifts and talents, using our gifts and talents in awesome ways that we plan for and that will be incredible and amazing and world-changing. And we’ll be happy and fulfilled and make a nice living at it, too.

I don’t know about you, but I need people like Solanus Casey to surround me and remind me what discipleship is really about.

Yeah, spending an hour or so here. Older Kid has an exam, and it’s his only one today, I had to drive (I usually don’t in the mornings, but other kid in the carpool didn’t have an exam this first period), it makes no sense to go back home, so here I am. Coffee shop? Well, I don’t drink coffee, and I didn’t feel like spending $4 on a mug of tea, so here I am with my Diet Coke.

I’ve got an article on the novelSilence over at Catholic World Report. It’s intended to help folks who are reading the novel for the first time. I had said a couple of weeks ago I would do a study guide, and I would still like to do that, but I’m not sure it’s going to happen. I have a book manuscript due February 1, and really, every spare minute I have needs to go to that, especially with the holidays here and the next couple of weeks about to vanish, in work terms, like smoke. It’s weird how that happens, and it happens every year: mid-December, I’m thinking, “Eh, I’ve got almost two months to finish this,” and then I wake up one morning, it’s early January and I’ve got like three weeks.

But I will say that if you want a deeper look at the novel, consider findingSilence and Beautyby Japanese Christian visual artist Makoto Fujimura. It’s a meditative read, and really helped me understand the novel and the Japanese cultural context out of which Endo wrote.

I read an annoyed tweet from a priest about Silence, objecting to “why do I have to read a book that celebrates apostasy?” Of course, Silence doesn’t do that, although it’s not hard to see how it could be interpreted that way, which is why it’s a good discussion-starter and conscience-pricker. Secondly, who says anyone has to read anything? Today everyone on my social media feeds is talking about the new Star Wars movie and I could NOT care less, but I feel no compunction to enter into the fray, and don’t feel annoyed about it. I just do my own thing. Not a problem, not a reason to get annoyed.

I think a great part of staying sane in this era of information is just understanding that people are different, have varied interests and yes, obsessions, and just because a substantial part of subcultures you bump up against over the course of a day are really interested in something..doesn’t mean you have to be..or that you have to disparage them for their interests.

It’s pretty amazing, and I’m actually sort of proud. As I said to Ann Engelhart on the phone the other day about it, We did this thing. It’s a little tradition that is spreading, bit by bit, and something we did has inspired a lot of it over on this side of the ocean. She gets most of the credit, because the book was her idea, and I’m grateful!

My younger son, the pianist, is a scholarship winner and member of the honors ensemble of his arts academy. In return for the scholarship, they are asked to play in a few special recitals through the year. Over the past couple of weeks, he played in two at a local retirement home/assisted living facility. He had two pieces, “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” I have a bit of the latter on Instagram here. That is one of the few secular Christmas songs that I like, mostly because of the historical context – written during World War II, with the original “narrator” of the song understood to be a soldier serving overseas. When you get that, that last line…I’ll be home for Christmas…if only in my dreams…just might *get* you a bit. And when your son is playing it for an audience of 80-90 year olds who’ve hobbled from their rooms with their walkers, bringing a lifetime of family, home, children and memories with them, and probably not much more time to go…yeah.

Speaking of Memento Mori, this is last week’s estate sale shot. The house was filthy, in terrible shape, making me wonder, as I always do in such situations, if the person living there had been just stubborn and not ever wanted any help (that happens), had alienated everyone who might help (that happens) or had been basically abandoned by those who should have been around to help (that happens too). As usual, the experience confirms my determination to not let that happen…